


Moon River

by ElectricOutcast



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batwoman (Comic), The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Tragedy, DC Black Label, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27333040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElectricOutcast/pseuds/ElectricOutcast
Summary: Birth and death clash with each other as Martha Wayne is given a final good-bye from her husband, the night their son is born.
Relationships: Martha Wayne/Thomas Wayne
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Moon River

**Author's Note:**

> I claim no ownership from any characters related to Batman, Batwoman, or The Sandman. They're owned by DC Comics and created by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Neil Gaiman.

**May 1989**

_Moon river, wider than a mile_

_I'm crossin' you in style someday_

_Old dream maker, you heartbreaker_

_Wherever you're goin', I'm goin' your way_

_Two drifters, off to see the world_

_There's such a lot of world to see_

_We're after the same rainbow's end, waitin' 'round the bend_

_My huckleberry friend, Moon River, and me_

The moon had been full the night Martha Wayne held and sang to her sleeping son, Bruce, it casted it's pale beautiful light on her baby's white swaddling blanket. The black hair that Martha shared with her baby, was gently stroked as Bruce suckled on Martha's breast for his first feeding, on recommendation from their loyal butler, Alfred Pennyworth, for him to not fall asleep while being fed. The wave of love Martha felt when she fed her son, it was real and pure, the love almost mirrored the love she felt for her husband and she couldn't wait for him to come home and share that love.

And as if on cue, Martha heard the click of the doorknob, and she saw the man she loved walk through the door of their master bedroom. Happy as she was to see him, her reaction quickly changed when she saw another woman walk in behind him. The woman wore all black, leather pants, knee-high boots, a diamond studded belt, and a leather biker's jacket that covered a black tank. But what Martha saw next, made her clutch her baby boy in fear. She saw blood coming out from a section of Thomas' chest, it had a hole that looked like the size of a bullet on the suit he wore the day he went to the Gotham City courthouse.

"Thomas," Martha began to say after getting over her initial shock. "You're back, but wha-."

Thomas quieted her by gently placing a finger on her lips, "I don't have much time left, my love, I wanted to come back to you one last time and see you and our son."

He then turned to look at his son, his head still being covered by Martha as Bruce peacefully sucked on Martha's breast. Thomas gently pried his wife's arm off to uncover his face, the baby's eyes began to open softly to look at the strange figure kneeling before the woman giving him food. Immediately Thomas noted how Bruce's blue eyes matched his, and for a grown man like Thomas Wayne, he began to tear up as he knew that this would be the only time that either man would see each other and that Bruce would be growing up without a father.

"What do you mean by not having much time left?" Martha began to ask.

"You'll know the answer when your sister comes to your house, Mrs. Wayne," the woman in black replied. "We're only here because your husband requested to be here."

"My sister?" Martha's eyes widened in shock as she looked at her husband. "Thomas, what the hell is going on?"

"Believe me, baby, if I could tell you I would," Thomas replied while beginning to hold his son. "But again I don't have much time left, Martha, but I want you to know something."

"What is it, Thomas, why are you telling me you don't have much time left?" Martha began to feel tears well up.

"Promise me that you'll be a good mother for our son, tell him to never be afraid, and tell him that I love him and always will. The same way that I love you."

"I love you too, Thomas." Before Martha could say anything else, she felt her lips being kissed by her husband. She felt a taste of his blood touch her lips and tongue as he gave her the most loving and heartfelt kiss that she ever received ever since their wedding day over two years ago.

"It's time to go, Thomas, you better give your son back to your wife and kiss him good-bye,' the woman in black softly said while touching Thomas' back.

Obediently, Thomas gently gave his son back to Martha and kissed his forehead before being gently pulled away from his weeping wife, after she grabbed him and cried on his shoulder. Soon Martha had to shield her and Bruce's eyes from a white light coming from the bookcase that held books collected by her own parents.

Suddenly the white light disappeared and Martha saw no trace of Thomas, the woman in black, or the blood that she didn't know was trailing on the carpet, or on Bruce's baby blanket. But Martha still felt the taste of her husband's blood on her tongue, a reminder that would remain with her for the rest of her life. It made Martha cry even harder when she began to realize the truth about everything.

The sobs from Martha were enough to make her baby cry along with her, and by the time the door opened, Alfred had entered the bedroom alongside another female wearing a black trench coat. Immediately Alfred reached for Bruce and gently pried him from Martha, and once the baby left her grasp, she immediately put both hands on her face as she sobbed uncontrollably. She didn't feel hands being wrapped around her by her sister Bethany Kane, who had come to do her duty as commissioner for the Gotham City Police Department. A duty that she was already dreading.

Thirty minutes had passed while the two sisters held each other in Martha's grief and curiosity had briefly struck Bethany as to how Martha could weep over her husband without even being told what had happened to him. But maybe it was the purest example of the love Martha and Thomas Wayne had displayed over the course of their marriage, how both husband and wife were able to communicate with each other in ways that weren't for normal people.

'Perhaps that's why she's grieving without being told a single word of what happened,' Bethany thought to herself as she felt her sister calm down.

"What happened, Beth, how did he die?" Martha softly asked her sister.

"No one knows where the shots came from," Bethany began to reply. "But he died instantly on the courthouse steps as soon as he was in plain sight."

"Sniper?"

"It's likely that he's gone and fled our city, sister, we're trying everything we can to find him. You can trust me to do that, can't you?" Bethany asked softly.

Martha nodded and fresh tears began to spill, "My son won't have a father, he doesn't have anybody left but me, sister."

"Don't forget me or your niece Kate, I took her with me to see the baby, she's been looking forward to meeting him for some time." Bethany referred to her eight year old daughter Katherine Kane. "You and Bruce will never be alone, I promise you that, even Alfred will tell you the same thing."

Martha moved her face from Bethany's chest to look into her eyes, she saw the truth and warmth in her eyes as her words began to comfort the grieving new mother. "You're never alone sister."

Martha nodded gently as she gave her older sister a hug, which the latter returned, but later released the hug when Alfred walked in and she asked "Where's Bruce?"

"I assure you, Lady Martha, young Master Bruce is calm, quiet, and in the care of Lady Kate." The butler gracefully moved to the side of the door to show the two sisters something that otherwise would've been strange under normal circumstances. A red headed eight year old little girl holding a baby the way Martha just did an hour before.

"Kate, why is Bruce sucking on your nipple?" Bethany looked at her daughter with bemusement.

"He wouldn't stop crying, mom, I was only copying what other moms would do in order to calm him down," she then looked at her mother with sad innocent eyes. "Is it true about uncle Thomas, mom?"

Bethany nodded to her daughter as she accepted the newborn boy from her. "I'm afraid it is, my angel, but rest assured his death will not be in vain and your aunt Martha and cousin Bruce will never be alone."

Bethany then took a good look at her newborn nephew and how beautiful he looked in the pale moonlight, "He looks almost exactly like his father, and he even has his blue eyes."

"He even likes the song dad would sing to us every night before bed, sister, Moon River," Martha said as she stroked her thumb on her son's cheek.

Bethany gave her nephew back to Martha, "Were you still feeding him, Martha?"

She nodded and studied her son's sleeping face. "But from the looks of things, he doesn't look like he needs anymore for the time being."

Martha then looked at her niece, who had already settled on the opposite side of her mother, "That was a very nice thing you did for you cousin, Kate, I thank you for calming him down."

"There's no need to thank me, Aunt Martha, I'll always be there for him no matter what, because he's mine just as much as yours."

"That he is, love," Bethany replied to Kate. "And he is also mine and your fathers."

"He'll never be alone," Martha said as she nestled her son to her chest.

ooooOOOOoooo

The mansion had been packed with all the who's who of Gotham City to gather around for the funeral of a respected doctor and businessman, who had been murdered the week before. His death would leave behind his young widow and her son, his barely one week old son. Those who knew Thomas Wayne, knew how happy he had been when he was looking forward to being a father, to be able to share the adventures of parenting with the young woman he loved since he met her when he was a colonel in the army. Speaking to the crowd of mourners that set in front of the closed casket that carried the late doctor, Martha spoke of their brief romance and marriage before his untimely death.

"As many of you know, Thomas and I had a big age difference between each other when we met. I was twenty-two years old, he had been thirty-eight, very young for a man like him to reach colonel, but he more than earned that rank thanks to his accomplishments during and after Vietnam. But the love we felt was so strong, it led him to retire from the Army and me with a resignation from the same after I had graduated. Sure some of you probably labeled him a sugar daddy after we got together, but we were more a team than just a cliched May-December couple. I wanted to achieve things myself and he was willing to help me, he even taught me how to defend myself without the need for guns. What I'm saying is, he was also a mentor to me and I know he could've been a good mentor to my son."

Tears began to well in her eyes as she began to finish her speech. "But someone tore my son away from his father, I trust my sister to find whoever killed him and bring him to justice, but I'll be honest, I don't even know if that will be enough. My son needs a father who can teach him right from wrong, to take care of other people, to do what is right for Gotham City. I know I'm capable of doing all that for him, but without his father, it's not even close to enough."

Sobbing now, Alfred walked to the grieving widow to gently walk back into her seat next to Kate and Bethany, who had been holding Bruce. Throughout her sobs, the reverend of Kane and Wayne's Episcopalian church began to recite prayers from the worship book they carried in their place of worship.

ooooOOOOoooo

Martha's brother-in-law, Jacob and a group of pallbearers were carrying the casket of Thomas Wayne to the Wayne family graveyard for one last walk before being laid to rest. Sometimes the weather had a good way of predicting when funerals would happen and it was displaying the undercurrents of a thunderstorm that was to occur later that night.

The final half of the funeral consisted of the reverend reciting more prayers from the prayer book, followed by Martha covering her baby's ears with noise blocking headphones, offered to her by Thomas' old unit as they began to give their fallen comrade the twenty one gun salute.

By the time Thomas Wayne's casket had been buried, Martha and other members of her family began to throw the first patches of dirt on his casket. The mourners were beginning to disperse as the rain started coming down. It was then Martha began to see something that appeared on the grave statue of her father, illuminated by the flashes of lightning. A big black bat looking at her and making its cries. Not hearing her own son's cries, Martha looked at the bat intently, she was almost immediately drawn to it.

'Could this be a message?' Martha asked herself while she looked at the bat beginning to fly now to her husband's gravestone.

"Lady Martha, we need to get you and Master Bruce out of this dreadful storm," Alfred's voice snapped Martha out of her trance.

Martha then blinked and finally noticed her baby crying due to him being pelted by rainwater. She finally followed Alfred to the car as he cranked the heat and drove away from the graveyard where her husband was laid to rest and a bat continued to perch.

"Calm yourself, Bruce," Martha whispered softly to her crying baby as she uncovered one of her breasts to him. "Mommy's here, love, it's going to be okay."

His cries were easily silenced as he opened his mouth and suckled milk out of his mom's breast. Calm enough now for her to think, Martha then whispered to her son, "Bruce, mark my words, the city will pay for what they've done to your father. I will make sure that no other innocent person will suffer the way you and I are suffering. When I find who killed your father, I will make him pay, I promise you."

Martha kissed Bruce's forehead as the town car drove mother and son away from the family graveyard and into the future.

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm finally back into writing something, I've been having ideas to write something for Batman for a few years but I got hit with severe writer's block, laziness, and even though I tried to write something on paper, I couldn't get anything to stick. But listening to the audio drama for Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, along with influences from Naruto, Witchblade, and The Batman movie trailer, I finally figured out the direction I want to go.
> 
> I want everyone to know that this story is a prologue to something bigger, and I'm even thinking about inviting people to write their own chapters for this little project if they want to. So if any of you are interested in co-writing with me on this project, let me know in the comments below. I'll think of the rules for this as I go along, because I don't want to get too crazy with this thing. Hope you guys enjoy this little twist to the mythos of Batman.


End file.
